Ode to Motherhood
Poems for My Mothers
by
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Inspiration: A Personal Reflection Standing on the Brink of Time On the 3rd day of March 1992, Mama died. She took her last breath at 9:14 pm and I was not there. I was caged in a hospital, nestled in the sheltered encampment on Mona campus of the University of the West Indies. It was a quarantined enclosure with a stainless steel frame and double paned glass doors. There was no window and the door could only be opened from the outside. There was an exhaust vent in the upper left corner of the room, with a fan; that provided ventilation. I spent many sleepless hours staring at it, wondering where the exhausted air went. Did it pass through a fumigation chamber and recycle again? I never figured the mystery of the vent. A telephone sat on the desk for external communication. This was maximum security at its best but it was within the confines of these cell walls where I found the remainder of myself… I did not sleep that night, I just could not. I was in too much pain to sleep or to focus on anything in perspective. Bugzy, a close friend of mine, was the last person I saw that night. He helped lay me in a comfortable position before he left, but comfort only lasted for so long. The night was loaded with nightmarish, hellish moments and I wished I could really find comfort in death, but my mind was far too active and refused to let me go. Strange as it might sound, the distance and places my mind travelled while I was left balancing on the brink of time, life and death; created the inspiration for my formal writing, in a tribute to the mothers who raised me. Left out there on the brink of time clarified the congestion and I knew then, exactly where I was going. The very spot and position Nettie, my sister-in-law, found me at 6:14 am that Friday morning was the same spot and position I had laid since 9:14 pm, Thursday night. Nettie came in through the cell door to tell me that Mama had died and that she could get me to a place where someone could provide the answers that I sought. Little did she know that I had sought and found the answers while balancing on the very brink of life. I asked her to help me to a sitting position. I then asked her when and at what time Mama died. The cloud began to compress around me, aspirating and suffocating me. I then said to her in an imposing tone, “I am alright, could you leave me alone?” She tried to utter something else and I looked at her. It must have been the look on my face because the words froze in her throat and she immediately exited the cell door. My siblings and I are all products of this old rugged frame. All this flooded my thoughts as tears sped down my cheeks. As I reminiscence on the mothers that raised me, I in poetic arrangements, configured and transformed their lives from temporal into spiritual forms exposing the naked truth, the purity of the “Goddess” in them. One of the first poems I wrote for this collection was “The Transfiguration.” As I looked at her in the casket, I did not recognize what my eyes beheld and I knew she had slipped away because she was not there. It bore no resemblance of the woman I lived with and knew all my life. I cried, not because she was gone, but because I did not know where she had gone. A feeling of abandonment, loss and total emptiness welled up inside. I knew that she would not have left without telling me where to find her. Tears rolled down my cheeks and Sister Nin, my eldest sister, came over and with a white handkerchief, wiped the tear from my face. I looked at her and the tears stopped shedding. Mama had wiped the tears from my eyes and whispered in my ears “It’s alright, I am here.” Suddenly it was so profoundly peaceful that a smile broke across my face. The night before Ronnie, my brother died, I knew that something dreadful was going to happen but the vision I got was focused on Sister Nin, my eldest sister. When I looked at him lying in state, in the church, I could not control myself, my emotion let loose, my mind tightened and I could not breathe. The emptiness, the same feeling crept up inside me, it’s like double jeopardy all over again. I found myself walking out of the church up to Sister Nin’s house; held her in my arms and sobbed, then bawled like a baby. She looked in my eyes wiped the tears from my face with a white handkerchief and whispered in my ears, “It’s alright, I am here.” A sense of peace overshadowed me and the tears stopped falling. I walked back to the church and direct the flow of curious onlookers.
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About the Book
Mothers sadly do not often receive the praise they deserve for their self-sacrifice and hard work. Franklin Douglas sings of their wondrous works in his new poetry collection Ode to Motherhood. Via the medium of forty-five poetic short stories, he captures the philosophical and moral essence of mothers’ emotions. Through vivid, vibrant prose, Douglas outlines the characteristics of earth’s mothers and gives credence to the care, beauty, and purity of motherhood. His words resonate with all readers who have been touched by a mother’s love, especially those who walk life’s path of conscious seeking. These poems are genuine and true. Douglas hopes to educate the generations to come through his insights. His poems are minimemoirs that pay homage to both the biological as well as voluntary mothers of the world. Mothers are to be celebrated for their hard work and endless devotion. Setting the tone for children and adults of all ages, embrace the mothers in your life and thank them for all they’ve done.
About the Author
Nothing remains static forever, not even one’s thoughts and dreams. Everything evolves, expands, and modifies to create a more dynamic society. If you are not conscious of the evolution of time and space, just look at where you were then and where you are now. Only then you can see where you are going. —Franklin W. Douglas It is with this kind of thinking that Franklin W. Douglas’s passion for writing poetry began. He was born in Beckford Kraal Clarendon, Jamaica. At some point thereafter a dyslexic pattern exploded inside him that could not be contained or cooped up any longer. We may call it “the expulsion of an inquisitive curiosity” that wanted to come out, to unleash, to explore, to strip naked and expose its virtues. Two expatriate teachers impacted his secondary education during his tenure at the Edwin Allen High School. They brought his creative thinking, expressed in writing and analysis, to the fore. He took on writing poetry as an internal expression within dimensions, and it became the vessel for expression of his thoughts. Ever since starting in this genre, he remains on an explosive continuum, as he can see a horizon beyond the horizon that leads to infinitely more horizons. Franklin is a lifelong learner, always acquiring knowledge. His studies led him from the Jamaican School of Agriculture to Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Alabama, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in animal science. He was awarded a Canadian Commonwealth Scholarship to the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, and earned a master of science degree in animal genetics. His studies, which were more scientifically based, did not stifle his creative writing skills. He chronicled a number of events, social issues, personal antidotes, and spiritual insights on the clarity of life and deaths that were happening around him, some in poetic form. Franklin’s poetry is vivid, vibrant, and philosophical, yet his poems resonate with all readers, especially those who are on the conscious journey of life. His writing is holistic, and he is always making plans to educate the generations to come. Franklin is multifaceted and talented. His hobbies include gardening, plant and animal breeding, and, of course, writing poetry. He lives in Manchester, Connecticut, with his wife. Their only daughter has made them grandparents.